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This shout causes the target to receive an armor penalty every second, and lose health points every second for 60 seconds, as follows (NOTE: the armor loss is permanent without use of the console to correct; hitting your allies will make them notably less resilient to physical damage for the rest of the game):

This shout is useful with all weapons and in many situations (particularly against difficult dragon species).

By repeatedly stacking on any one opponent, this allows them to be killed with as little as a single punch (this includes all dragon types). This is because armour values can go negative, and negative armour increases damage taken. Can be verified with use of the console.

Use of this shout on a companion will permanently lower their armor rating.

Use of this shout on respawning enemies may reduce their armor rating even after they respawn. Meaning the player will eventually be able to kill a giant with a single physical punch after using marked for death countless times.

Both of the above effects are a result of the Recover flag not being checked in the game files. (Verified via inspecting both effects in the PC version Creation Kit. PC version owners can fix this themselves.)

360 Though very effective against dragons, using it against them can cause them not to release their souls and burn up when they die.

Upon returning to Autumnwatch Tower it is possible for an additional word of the shout to be learned. This means one of the other walls is not required to learn the full shout.

When used against Dragon Priests, they won't attack and will stop moving.

In Dawnguard, if the player has at least one word of both the Drain Vitality and Marked for Death shouts known, a second version of the Drain Vitality shout using the same words as Marked for Death will appear in the shout menu and will be usable, with all the words having a cooldown of 12. Its description will say "Drains 1 points of Health per second for 20 seconds. Drains 1 points of Magicka per second for 20 seconds. Drains 1 points of Stamina per second for 20 seconds." Spending a soul on Marked For Death also counts as using it on said copy, since they use the same words, and each time the player learns a new word for Marked for Death they learn it for this alternate version as well. This version might also have been a single shout that ended up being split into the Marked for Death and Drain Vitality.

The reason this happens is that all the NPC versions that are used were set with the Words used for Marked for Death rather than the stock "Dragon Fire" Words. (Verified via the Creation Kit.)

The only known way to fix this is to start a new game without Dawnguard installed and wait until you have all 3 words of Marked for Death before installing it. (Audio bug is confirmed for PC.)

When using all three words of this shout, the Dragonborn will shout "LUN LUN AUS" instead of "KRII LUN AUS".